Down Among The Dead
by HVK
Summary: After the war, Fire Lord Zuko promotes seeing the world among his people, so they better understand it; Mai goes to the ruins of the Southern Air Temple with Avatar Aang, and is troubled by what she sees.


_Hey, all! For your reading pleasure, I have brought another Avatar drabble-slash-character study, this time focusing on Mai. She needs attention._

_The idea behind this is that I feel that the Air Nomad genocide is a subject that should be given a bit more attention, and for a chance, I've shown aspects of it through Mai's perspective. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but that's up to you guys, I think._

_There's a hint of Mai-slash-Aang if you like it, and hints of Kataang for you canon-dudes. Who doesn't like Kataang? Besides the meaner sort of Zutarians. Say, 'Zutarian' sounds like it'd make for a good fantasy country name, don't you? Zutaria! Homeland of those enamoured of non-canon shipping goodness!_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Avatar: The Last Airbender._

...

Except for the clicking-clattering of the small crab-things moving through the hallways, so timid and fearful that they fled for their lives at the very prospect of meeting another living thing, the temple was empty of noise, dead of sound.

Mai dislikes it.

Without expression, without apparent emotion, she had drifted through the places of residence where generations of Air Nomads had been raised, moving with all the silence and transparency of the ghosts some people still believed haunted the Air Temples. Ordinarily, she ignored thoughts like that, but here, among the snow-buried skeletons and ashen bodies of the long-dead, she can almost believe it.

The wind is a low, rumbling roar, whistling as it scraps across open windows and the tattered flags. Distantly, she thinks it sounds like the discontent whispers of the dead Air Nomads, small voices coming together as a single thing until the acclumated sound was a waterfall.

She stands at the periphery of a balcony overlooking the daunting mountains the Southern Air Temple had been constructed on who-knew many years ago, and feels that it isn't quite right. This wasn't the right stuff for a home; it was too windy, too high, too cold. Home was properly warm, flatlands and archepelagoes, the sun a blazing warmth like a dragon breathing on your back. But there were other things wrong with the place that went further than her preferences as a woman of the Fire Nation.

She felt it as a delicate shudder. This was a place of the dead, hallowed, empty and sad.

"So," She says aloud. The silence is a defeaning horror, something that begs to be filled, like a starving half-dead child, all dry skin stretched out over stick-thin bones. "This is where you grew up."

The young monk next to her nods once, with none of the usual irrepressible energy he has. She knows precious little of his character, having little contact with him even when she had been Azula's uncaring pawn, but she already knows that he's like a whirling ball of wind, a tiny hurricane that doesn't ever stop roaring, pulling everything in it's path into itself and somehow making the world be as bright and cheerful as he himself was.

All hurricanes, though, had a dead spot, an eye that was calm and lifeless. This one was worse than most, a blank thing that was peaceful, yes, but it wasn't a happy kind; it was the peace of cold bodies, of burnt villages without a living soul to call it home, a tightly contracted zone of horror that was seen so seldom you might not think it was even there.

She glances around. The Air Nomads, it seemed, had a passion for building elaborate murals wherever they could. She's not entirely clear why; the artwork looks odd to her as well, lacking the straight edges and strong lines of Fire Nation patterns. This is more loose and stylized, and after a moment she decided that it fits.

She doesn't say anything. The tension is almost choking.

This trip was, of course, Zuko's idea. In one of his recent fits of ill-conceived inspiration, he decided that it was in the world's best interests to understand another; the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation needed to understand, intimately, the mindsets and cultures of the other nations, and so he had effectively ordered the nobles of the Fire Nation to go out and see the world. Gradually, the other nations were catching on to the idea.

Which was why _she _was here in the Southern Air Temple in the company of the last Air Nomad; the Avatar himself. It had seemed a good idea, for whatever reason, and she was begining to regret it.

In the ordinary course of things, she wasn't particular bothered about other people. Gradually opening up to people was a pain, but even with her limited interest in most people, the Air Temple deeply disturbed her, and she suspected that the history books were going to share her attitude. The ones she had been taught had always described the defeat of the Air Nomads as a glorious victory on the part of the Fire Nation; a one-sided melee in the Air Nomad's favor, even with the power of the Great Comet fueling the Firebenders, and it would seem to be the blessings of the Spirits that had gotten anyone out of there alive. They'd been told that it had been a brilliant strategy on the behalf of Fire Lord Sozin, an act of courage and military skill.

Now people were starting to call him Sozin the Destroyer. And even, as the rumors that Sozin had been the closest friend of Avatar Roku and left him to his death for the sake of his dreams of conquest, Sozin the Betrayer.

It had been no great victory. She could see that in the faded blood on the walls, in the too-small skeletons still half-shrouded in orange robes, in the patches of ancient burns on the walls. It had been a completely one-sided massacre, and while that had been implied in a sense in their teachings, it was completely another thing to be made aware that the Fire Nation (her _homeland)_ had marched on temples filled with peaceful monks and children and murdered every last one.

She dares glance at the uncharacteristically solemn monk besides her. All his friends and whatever family he might have had had died then. It was a sobering thought.

"It used to be a better home," She hears Aang say, as though at a great distance.

"Yeah," She says. She frowns faintly. "You could have it cleaned. Proper buriels. Have the place restored."

Aang nods. Just once, very slowly, as though the idea needs to trickle down into his bones. He doesn't say anything. She doesn't blame him.

She looks down at the much smaller boy and thinks, for a moment, that he looks much older than he actually is. He's only twelve, but he doesn't look it. He certainly doesn't look like the last remnant of a lost people, or a little boy who had to grow up too fast, and most certainly not like the incarnation of the planet's spirit. For a moment, in spite of herself, she deeply pities him. She has no way of understanding the weight he has to carry, the duty he carried to everyone in the world. Even to the Fire Nation.

Her people murdered his. It makes her more than a little uncomfortable in his presence, though the reverse doesn't seem true. That he bears the Fire Nation no apparent grudge or even resentment is a mystery.

"I'm sorry," She hears herself says. She's surprised and annoyed about it.

Aang glances up at her, equally surprised. "For what?"

She dares to glance at the ruined Air Temple. At the smell of the ancient death. "For this."

He stares at her, gray eyes squinted a bit in puzzlement. Those eyes were unusual; much kinder than seemed natural, and they were so very much like Ty Lee's. He looked a lot like her, actually, more than most people she'd known. She'd certainly never met anybody with eyes liker her's. Before she can think on it more, he smiles slightly and says, "It's..." He stops, as if unsure of what he means to say. He swallows, looking a little sick for a moment. "It's _gone_." His voice is now a whisper, joining that of the wind. "Can't be fixed." He shakes his head. "But we can try."

She accepts that, feeling better for her momentary lapse in restraint. "...Do you actually want to live here again?"

That, of course, was his primary reason for taking her here. Quite apart from showing an outsider aspects of a culture he was still proud of, she had heard rumors that he intended to restore the Air Temples, for obvious reason. That he wanted a proper home seemed likely.

"Maybe," He said evasively. "It's close enough to the South Pole." At that, she remembers the Water Tribe girl he isn't often apart from, now currently in her homeland to guide the efforts to rebuild the Southern Water Tribe. Not much different from the Avatar's stated intention, then. Perhaps he got the idea from her.

There's a long, rattling sigh; for a moment she thinks it's her, and then realizes that it's the wind whistling over the grand open hall they're in.

She's not sure what to say. She doesn't know if there is anything _to _say. Without thinking about it, she puts a hand over his shoulder.

He doesn't shake her off, and she is content with that.

Everything is quiet; the wind subsides to a whispering echo.

She can't help but think that it sounds like a thousand voices promising farewells to the last of their kind.


End file.
